In addition to novels featuring these characters, Christie also wrote nonseries mysteries, such as And Then There Were None (first published in Britain in 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers, which was quite justly deemed unsuitable for the American audience), Sparkling Cyanide (1945), and Endless Night (1967). First produced in 1952, her play The Mousetrap – one of more than a dozen she wrote – is still drawing audiences in London. In all of her work, she created a world in which the guilty party was nearly always punished – a world of English villages, manor houses with perfect gardens, afternoon teas, and a clear delineation between “upstairs” and “downstairs.” With the exception of the latter – servants did not fare particularly well in Christie's work – one cannot help but agree with critic Michael Seward's comment upon the occasion of Dame Agatha's death: “If Christie's world didn't really exist, it should have.”
THE LOVE DETECTIVES
MR. SATTERTHWAITE AND HARLEY QUIN
ENGLAND 1930
Little Mr. Satterthwaite looked thoughtfully across at his host. The friendship between these two men was an odd one. The colonel was a simple country gentleman whose passion in life was sport. The few weeks that he spent perforce in London, he spent unwillingly. Mr. Satterthwaite, on the other hand, was a town bird. He was an authority on French cooking, on ladies' dress, and on all the latest scandals. His passion was observing human nature, and he was an expert in his own special line – that of an onlooker at life. It would seem, therefore, that he and Colonel Melrose would have little in common, for the colonel had no interest in his neighbors' affairs and a horror of any kind of emotion. The two men were friends mainly because their fathers before them had been friends. Also they knew the same people and had reactionary views about nouveaux riches.
It was about half past seven. The two men were sitting in the colonel's comfortable study, and Melrose was describing a run of the previous winter with a keen hunting man's enthusiasm. Mr. Satterthwaite, whose knowledge of horses consisted chiefly of the time–honored Sunday–morning visit to the stables which still obtains in old–fashioned country houses, listened with his invariable politeness.
The sharp ringing of the telephone interrupted Melrose. He crossed to the table and took up the receiver.
“Hello, yes – Colonel Melrose speaking. What's that?” His whole demeanor altered – became stiff and official. It was the magistrate speaking now, not the sportsman. He listened for some moments, then said laconically, “Right, Curtis. I'll be over at once.” He replaced the receiver and turned to his guest. “Sir James Dwighton has been found in his library –
murdered. “
“What?”
Mr. Satterthwaite was startled – thrilled. “I must go over to Alderway at once. Care to come with me?” Mr. Satterthwaite remembered that the colonel was chief constable of the county.
“If I shan't be in the way –” He hesitated.
“Not at all. That was Inspector Curtis telephoning. Good, honest fellow, but no brains. I'd be glad if you would come with me, Satterthwaite. I've got an idea this is going to turn out a nasty business.”
“Have they got the fellow who did it?”
“No,” replied Melrose shortly.
Mr. Satterthwaite's trained ear detected a nuance of reserve behind the curt negative. He began to go over in his mind all that he knew of the Dwightons. A pompous old fellow, the late Sir James, brusque in his manner. A man that might easily make enemies. Veering on sixty, with grizzled hair and a florid face. Reputed to be tightfisted in the extreme. His mind went on to Lady Dwighton. Her image floated before him, young, auburn–haired, slender. He remembered various rumors, hints, odd bits of gossip. So that was it – that was why Melrose looked so glum. Then he pulled himself up – his imagination was running away with him.
Five minutes later Mr. Satterthwaite took his place beside his host in the latter's little two seater, and they drove off together into the night. The colonel was a taciturn man. They had gone quite a mile and a half before he spoke. Then he jerked out abruptly. “You know 'em, I suppose?”
“The Dwightons? I know all about them, of course.” Who was there Mr. Satterthwaite didn't know all about? “I've met him once, I think, and her rather oftener.”
“Pretty woman,” said Melrose.
“Beautiful!” declared Mr. Satterthwaite.
“Think so?”
“A pure Renaissance type,” declared Mr. Satterthwaite, warming up to his theme. “She acted in those theatricals – the charity matinee, you know, last spring. I was very much struck. Nothing modern about her – a pure survival. One can imagine her in the doge's palace, or as Lucrezia Borgia.”
The colonel let the car swerve slightly, and Mr. Satterthwaite came to an abrupt stop. He wondered what fatality had brought the name of Lucrezia Borgia to his tongue. Under the circumstances – ”Dwighton was not poisoned, was he?” he asked abruptly.
Melrose looked at him sideways, somewhat curiously. “Why do you ask that, I wonder?” he said.
“Oh, I – I don't know.” Mr. Satterthwaite was flustered. “I – It just occurred to me.”
“Well, he wasn't,” said Melrose gloomily. “If you want to know, he was crashed on the head.”
“With a blunt instrument,” murmured Mr. Satterthwaite, nodding his head sagely.
“Don't talk like a damned detective story, Satterthwaite. He was hit on the head with a bronze figure.”
“Oh,” said Satterthwaite, and relapsed into silence.
“Know anything of a chap called Paul Delangua?” asked Melrose after a minute or two.
“Yes. Good–looking young fellow.”
“I daresay women would call him so,” growled the colonel.
“You don't like him?”
“No, I don't.”
“I should have thought you would have. He rides very well.”
“Like a foreigner at the horse show. Full of monkey tricks.”
Mr. Satterthwaite suppressed a smile. Poor old Melrose was so very British in his outlook. Agreeably conscious himself of a cosmopolitan point of view, Mr. Satterthwaite was able to deplore the insular attitude toward life.
“Has he been down in this part of the world?” he asked.
“He's been staying at Alderway with the Dwightons. The rumor goes that Sir James kicked him out a week ago.”
“Why?”
“Found him making love to his wife, I suppose. What the hell –”
There was a violent swerve, and a jarring impact.
“Most dangerous crossroads in England,” said Melrose. “All the same, the other fellow should have sounded his horn. We're on the main road. I fancy we've damaged him rather more than he has damaged us.”
He sprang out. A figure alighted from the other car and joined him. Fragments of speech reached Satterthwaite.
“Entirely my fault, I'm afraid,” the stranger was saying. “But I do not know this part of the country very well, and there's absolutely no sign of any kind to show you're coming onto the main road.”
The colonel, mollified, rejoined suitably. The two men bent together over the stranger's car, which a chauffeur was already examining. The conversation became highly technical.
“A matter of half an hour, I'm afraid,” said the stranger. “But don't let me detain you. I'm glad your car escaped injury as well as it did.”
“As a matter of fact –” the colonel was beginning, but he was interrupted. Mr. Satterthwaite, seething with excitement, hopped out of the car with a birdlike action, and seized the stranger warmly by the hand.
“It is! I thought I recognized the voice,” he declared excitedly. “What an extraordinary thing. What a very extraordinary thing.”
“Eh?” said Colonel Melrose.
“Mr. Harley Quin. Melrose, I'm sure you've heard me speak many times of Mr. Quin?”
Colonel Melrose did not seem to remember the fact, but he assisted politely at the scene while Mr. Satterthwaite was chirruping gaily on. “I haven't seen
you – let me see –”
“Since the night at the Bells and Motley,” said the other quietly.
“The Bells and Motley, eh?” said the colonel.
“An inn,” explained Mr. Satterthwaite.
“What an odd name for an inn.”
“Only an old one,” said Mr. Quin. “There was a time, remember, when bells and motley were more common in England than they are nowadays.”
“I suppose so; yes, no doubt you are right,” said Melrose vaguely. He blinked. By a curious effect of light – the headlights of one car and the red taillight of the other – Mr. Quin seemed for a moment to be dressed in motley himself. But it was only the light.
“We can't leave you here stranded on the road,” continued Mr. Satterthwaite. “You must come along with us. There's plenty of room for three, isn't there, Melrose?”
“Oh rather.” But the colonel's voice was a little doubtful. “The only thing is,” he remarked, “the job we're on. Eh, Satterthwaite?”
Mr. Satterthwaite stood stock–still. Ideas leaped and flashed over him. He positively shook with excitement.
“No,” he cried. “No, I should have known better! There is no chance where you are concerned, Mr. Quin. It was not an accident that we all met tonight at the crossroads.”
Colonel Melrose stared at his friend in astonishment. Mr. Satterthwaite took him by the arm. “You remember what I told you – about our friend Derek Capel? The motive for his suicide, which no one could guess? It was Mr. Quin who solved that problem – and there have been others since. He shows you things that are there all the time, but which you haven't seen. He's marvelous.”
“My dear Satterthwaite, you are making me blush,” said Mr. Quin, smiling. “As far as I can remember, these discoveries were all made by you, not by me.”
“They were made because you were there,” said Mr. Satterthwaite with intense conviction.
“Well,” said Colonel Melrose, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “We mustn't waste any more time. Let's get on.”
He climbed into the driver's seat. He was not too well pleased at having the stranger foisted upon him through Mr. Satterthwaite's enthusiasm, but he had no valid objection to offer, and he was anxious to get on to Alderway as fast as possible.
Mr. Satterthwaite urged Mr. Quin in next, and himself took the outside seat. The car was a roomy one and took three without undue squeezing.
“So you are interested in crime, Mr. Quin?” said the colonel, doing his best to be genial.
“No, not exactly in crime.”
“What, then?”
Mr. Quin smiled. “Let us ask Mr. Satterthwaite. He is a very shrewd observer.”
“I think,” said Satterthwaite slowly, “I may be wrong, but I think – that Mr. Quin is interested in – lovers. “
He blushed as he said the last word, which is one no Englishman can pronounce without self–consciousness. Mr. Satterthwaite brought it out apologetically, and with an effect of inverted commas.
“By gad!” said the colonel, startled and silenced.
He reflected inwardly that this seemed to be a very rum friend of Satterthwaite's. He glanced at him sideways. The fellow looked all right – quite a normal young chap. Rather dark, but not at all foreign–looking.
“And now,” said Satterthwaite importantly, “I must tell you all about the case.”
He talked for some ten minutes. Sitting there in the darkness, rushing through the night, he had an intoxicating feeling of power. What did it matter if he were only a looker–on at life? He had words at his command, he was master of them, he could string them to a pattern – a strange Renaissance pattern composed of the beauty of Laura Dwighton, with her white arms and red hair – and the shadowy dark figure of Paul Delangua, whom women found handsome. Set that against the background of Alderway – Alderway that had stood since the days of Henry VII and, some said, before that. Alderway that was English to the core, with its clipped yew and its old beak barn and the fishpond, where monks had kept their carp for Fridays.
In a few deft strokes he had etched in Sir James, a Dwighton who was a true descendant of the old De Wittons, who long ago had wrung money out of the land and locked it fast in coffers, so that whoever else had fallen on evil days, the masters of Alderway had never become impoverished.
At last Mr. Satterthwaite ceased. He was sure, had been sure all along, of the sympathy of his audience.
He waited now the word of praise which was his due. It came.
“You are an artist. Mr. Satterthwaite.”
“I – I do my best.” The little man was suddenly humble.
They had turned in at the lodge gates some minutes ago. Now the car drew up in front of the doorway, and a police constable came hurriedly down the steps to meet them.
“Good evening, sir. Inspector Curtis is in the library.”
“Right.”
Melrose ran up the steps followed by the other two. As the three of them passed across the wide hall, an elderly butler peered from a doorway apprehensively. Melrose nodded to him.
“Evening, Miles. This is a sad business.”
“It is indeed,” the other quavered. “I can hardly believe it, sir; indeed I can't. To think that anyone should strike down the master.”
“Yes, yes,” said Melrose, cutting him short. “I'll have a talk with you presently.”
He strode on to the library. There a big, soldierly–looking inspector greeted him with respect
“Nasty business, sir. I have not disturbed things. No fingerprints on the weapon. Whoever did it knew his business.”
Mr. Satterthwaite looked at the bowed figure sitting at the big writing–table, and looked hurriedly away again. The man had been struck down from behind, a smashing blow that had crashed in the skull. The sight was not a pretty one. The weapon lay on the floor – a bronze figure about two feet high, the base of it stained and wet.
Mr. Satterthwaite bent over it curiously.
“A Venus,” he said softly. “So he was struck down by Venus.”
He found food for poetic meditation in the thought.
“The windows,” said the inspector, “were all closed and bolted on the inside.”
He paused significantly.
“Making an inside job of it,” said the chief constable reluctantly. “Well – well, we'll see.”
The murdered man was dressed in golf clothes, and a bag of golf clubs had been flung untidily across a big leather couch.
“Just come in from the links,” explained the inspector, following the chief constable's glance. “At five–fifteen, that was. Had tea brought here by the butler. Later he rang for his valet to bring him down a pair of soft slippers. As far as we can tell, the valet was the last person to see him alive.”
Melrose nodded, and turned his attention once more to the writing–table.
A good many of the ornaments had been overturned and broken. Prominent among these was a big dark enamel clock, which lay on its side in the very center of the table.
The inspector cleared his throat.
“That's what you might call a piece of luck, sir,” he said. “As you see, it's stopped. At half past six. That gives us the time of the crime. Very convenient.”
The colonel was staring at the clock.
“As you say,” he remarked. “Very convenient.” He paused a minute, and then added, “Too damned convenient! I don't like it, Inspector.”
He looked around at the other two. His eye sought Mr. Quin's with a look of appeal in it.
“Damn it all,” he said. “It's too neat. You know what I mean. Things don't happen like that.”
“You mean,” murmured Mr. Quin, “that clocks don't fall like that?”
Melrose stared at him for a moment, then back at the clock, which had that pathetic and innocent look familiar to objects which have been suddenly bereft of their dignity. Very carefully Colonel Melrose replaced it on its legs again. He struck the table a violent blow. The clock rocked, but it did not fall. Me
lrose repeated the action, and very slowly, with a kind of unwillingness, the clock fell over on its back.
“What time was the crime discovered?” demanded Melrose sharply.
“Just about seven o'clock, sir.”
“Who discovered it?”
“The butler.”
“Fetch him in,” said the chief constable. “I'll see him now. Where is Lady Dwighton, by the way?”
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